A lot of men (and women too) are afraid to hold a baby for fear of dropping them.
Once you've been doing the parenting thing for awhile, this seems sort of ridiculous. But it's not.
Our friend Richard was carrying his 4-month-old son in a car carrier in a parking lot when the baby fell out and slammed to the ground. Richard, who lost his family in the Rwandan genocide (his father, mother, and two brothers were killed with machetes), and who had to leave Rwanda because of fears for his safety and did not even see his son until he was three months old, felt like the worst father in the world. When the ambulance came to take Nshuti to the hospital, Richard begged them to arrest him. He was crying so hard he didn't see the looks on their faces. They knew, like you and I know, that Richard hadn't dropped his baby on purpose.
Nshuti, who had blood in his eyes from the fall, was totally fine.
Women drop babies too. Some things that we
ReplyDeleteclaim are "natural" like nursing and holding a baby aren't necessarily so. It's a learned behavior.
I learned how to hold babies in pediatrics during nursing school (protecting their little heads and necks and how to hold them). And I worked with a lactation specialist for 4 months who had to teach a lot of nursing moms how to nurse a baby. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's not.
We used to have a vibrating bouncy seat that Dina picked up in a Goodwill Store for $3. Our babies loved it and we would put them in it on top of the counter. Stefan once bounced his way to the edge without Dina noticing and fell 3 feet straped in it. Luckily, no harm was done but she called me and I had to rush over from work to check him (and her) out. Very traumatic when things like this happen. And they can happen to anyone.
Peter Chordas
Nurse Practitioner
http://place2place.blogs.com/